


come on and grab your gun, let's ride

by notthebigspoon



Category: British Actor RPF, James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Sherlock (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:16:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthebigspoon/pseuds/notthebigspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a certain person Q is attracted to and James gives him everything he wants.</p><p>Title taken from Let's Ride by Kid Rock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come on and grab your gun, let's ride

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even fucking know what I'm doing here but I regret nothing.

The man isn’t unattractive. James can see why Q is so taken with him, why he has a manic need to buy anything in which the man makes an appearance. He even finds himself watching with him at times, paying attention to the story though he has never been much interested in watching television. Though, he has always been rather interested in the Sherlock Holmes novels, the power of observation. This man’s is one of the better performances that James has ever seen. It always makes him laugh. Usually only Q can do that.

He’s in the middle of an operation targeting a man named Fadhil when Q calls him in a near panic. The Cumberbatch fellow has been snatched and it’s been placed on MI6 to fetch him. Generally James would have nothing to do with what he considers such trivialities. But it’s Q... and it does mean so very much to him. Well, James supposes it wouldn’t hurt to let the sodding Americans have this one. He’s gotten bored watching the Mexican and the young one anyway.

He calls it, calls M and demands the mission, gathers his information. It doesn’t seem as if it’ll be terribly difficult. He doesn’t like the idea of it. Human traffickers have always stuck him as the lowest of the low and James knows precisely what kind of misery someone as attractive as Cumberbatch would encounter. It reduces his capacity for empathy for those he encounters. He maims and kills indiscriminately. Anything to accomplish the objective as quickly as possible.

It’s strange. Cumberbatch is so beautiful even when he’s beaten and bloodied and abused, brings feelings that only Q has ever managed to rouse in him before. He feels like a fool. It’s ridiculous enough that Q was so taken with James, it’s something that James has tried and failed to understand, but it’s even more ridiculous to feel this way for someone who would scarcely look at James twice. He’s likely any number of attractive women interested in him. It’s best forgotten.

James sleeps through the flight back to Britain.

*****

He can feel the burning as they push the hot needle under his nails, screams as they approach his eyes with a drill and... then he wakes up.

It’s dark and in his terror he thinks they’ve really drilled his eyes out. But then a darkened room comes into focus. It could be any sitting room in Britain, looking to be furnished rather nicely, thought the massive television and video games systems seem to indicate that it’s a bachelor flat. He struggles to sit up and then passes on the idea. He’s aching and his head is spinning. Frightened or not, he simply can’t move.

A light comes on in the next room, illuminates the sitting room with residual light and he rolls over to get a look. There’s a blonde man in jeans and a t-shirt, a darker haired one in pajamas. The brunette seems excited by Ben’s presence and the blonde indifferent, though somewhat indulgent of the brunette’s excitement. They’ll protect him until he’s recovered, as the objective states, and then he’s being packed back off to MI6 to be debriefed on what happened to him. The blonde’s word is law.

Well, so he’s been rescued. He thought he’d feel something, after all the times he fantasized about being taken away from it all. But he doesn’t. He’s just so very tired. Hungry and thirsty as he is, he simply lies back and closes his eyes, tries to sleep it away. Sleep comes easily. And so do the nightmares.

When he wakes again, the sun is shining. Bachelor pad or not, the room looks rather cheerful. The dark haired man of the night before is perched in an armchair with a computer in his lap. When he notes that Ben is awake, he smiles brightly and holds up a finger, tapping something out on the keyboard before shutting the laptop and putting it away. The next thing he does is get Ben tea, toast and marmalade. It’s not until Ben has started to eat that he begins to talk.

It’s all very simple, he says. Ben was kidnapped because someone was willing to pay a high price for him and he fell into the hands of a sadist. The young man had arranged for MI6 to intervene and their best agent had been sent in to retrieve him. A lucky thing, too, because they had been prepared to drill his eyes out when he’d been retrieved and Ben simply didn’t know what they would do with the empty sockets.

“I severely doubt that you would know either, Q.” A dry voice states. The blonde man is leaning in the doorway of the room. He shucks his jacket, moves closer and sits on the arm of ‘Q’s’ chair.

“Skull fucking scat fic.” Q answers stubbornly, looking somewhat smug at the expression on the blonde’s face. “Mr. Cumberbatch, may I introduce James Bond. MI6 agent 007. Her Majesty’s finest and your rescuer. Also a bloody pain in the arse.”

“You’re one to talk, you jumped up little shit.” Bonde snorts before looking at Ben with ice cold blue eyes. “I fetched you because Q asked me to. You’ll convalesce here and then you will leave. I hope I am correct in believing that we have an understanding on the matter.”

“Of course.” Ben answers, somewhat stupidly, watching the man rise and stride out of the room when his mobile rings. He can’t imagine how he could have upset the man so terribly simply by being there. Even more confusing is the way Q looks so amused by it. “Is he always so charming?”

“Only when he wants something.”

“Can’t imagine what he’d be like if he didn’t want me to be gone so very quickly. “Ben answers with a frown. He can’t understand why Q laughs as hard as he does.

*****

James’s anger and agitation towards Ben is really rather adorable, though when he tells James so, he doesn’t get shagged for the next three days. He can’t understand why James is so ashamed of feeling attraction and affection for Ben. Ben is beautiful and it’s so easy to love him. Q is quite certain Ben feels the same level of affection in return, though his apparent fear of James and his ill moods prevent him from voicing it aloud.

It’s all so very ridiculous.

When Ben has reached a full recovery, Q feels the idyllic bubble they’ve been living in bursting around him. It had felt like they had all the time in the world and suddenly they don’t anymore. Ben will be leaving and if Q doesn’t take his shot now, he’ll have lost it forever. It’s what propels him to kiss Ben the moment he returns from a walk through the garden. Ben melts into it, grips Q’s shoulders, asks him what James will think.

“Bloody hell, James loves you too, he just thinks that he shouldn’t.”

It’s not discussed further. They can focus on little but removing each other’s clothing and following a winding path to Q and James’s bedroom. A part of him feels a bit guilty about going to this bed but if Q doesn’t claim Ben now, they’ll lose him entirely and besides, James will forgive him. He’ll rage a bit, of course, but he’ll grow to accept that it’s perfectly acceptable for the two of them to love a man and to share that man.

Everything feels so much different with Ben. There’s not that sense of fierceness that always seems to follow James to bed. Ben has a softer touch, wants to drag it all out so slowly that Q doesn’t think he’ll last much longer without entirely losing his mind. It feels like he does, clutching Ben’s broad shoulders and moaning his name, rolling his body in time with those thrusts before he’s shaking to pieces and coming on their skin.

It only takes one look from James when he arrives home to know exactly what they did. Everything about him turns to stone. Ben is nervous, afraid, guilty. Q can practically smell it on him but he himself knows James far too well to be at all concerned about the change in his husband’s demeanor. He doesn’t allow Ben to flee the way that he’d like to. He makes him stay in the house until James had been agitated into talking about what’s been going on.

True to form, he says very little, grudgingly admitting that he cares a great deal for Ben and he really hasn’t any aversion to sharing. The whole idea is bloody insane. Ben and Q are both mad as a march hare and that is that. Ben will be staying, will be a part of them, though it takes a day or so for Q to convince him of the fact. He doesn’t know how to react to and deal with James’s personality. That’s okay. He’ll learn.

*****

“I suppose you have something to tell me 007?”

“Nothing at all. Mr. Cumberbatch will remain with us. The department need not worry itself about the matter.”

“Bond...”

“It’s not to be discussed. I consider the subject closed.

*****

Ben knows that James and Q (whom he wishes he could call by his first name but his lover seems to hate it so) work for MI6 and he knows he’s not permitted to discuss it with anyone he knows. If unduly questioned, he’s told to say they hold minor positions in the British government. The whole thing reminds him absurdly of Mycroft on Sherlock. He doesn’t think Jones or Q hold that sort of power but what they do certainly isn’t nothing.

More often than not, Q doesn’t appear to leave the house. He works from home in an office that James and Ben are rarely permitted to enter. He’ll spend entire days in his pajamas, working on his computer and eating endless bowls of sugary cereal. He fends for himself during the day but Ben’s taken it upon himself to be the one to do the cooking in the evenings. James could, he simply has little desire to.

Ben has little certainty to go on in regards to James’s work, just spy movies and that teaches him little. What he does know is that James will be gone for days and weeks at a time with little communication. He never calls, just sends small things that make him think of them. Ben’s received presents from the world over and though he loves that James thinks of him while he’s on a mission, a part of him hates it all. It’s so dangerous and there’s always such a real possibility that James might never come home at all.

It’s worse when Q is watching the news. Generally he takes little interest in the daily news. When he does watch, it’s something to do with James and it’s never good. Ben still doesn’t understand it. He must get better news from MI6 and Ben knows he works directly in relation to James’s work. He’d know. Maybe it’s more of a comfort to view things from a civilian’s vantage point. Maybe. Ben has no bloody idea anymore.

The crisis comes when he’s finished a weeks worth of night shoots for Sherlock with Rupert and Martin. They’re all in a state of utter exhaustion and Ben’s place is nearer than either of theirs, they can both crash with him. Neither of them are adverse to the idea and Rupert’s displayed a great deal of curiosity about Ben’s personal life lately anyway. He’ll take this as a welcome opportunity to do a bit of snooping. Hopefully Q won’t mind.

There’s no way of knowing. When they reach home, the house is dark in spite of the forenoon hour. There’s a note on the kitchen counter.

‘James in trouble. Going after him. Don’t know when I’ll be back. No wild parties. Love you. -Q’

He doesn’t tell Rupert and Martin why he cries out and crumples to the floor.

*****

“How many times must I tell you not to meddle with the bloody Americans, much less The Losers? They ruin everything they touch and they’ll get you killed! Let them fix their own messes! Ben and I need you.”

James’s only response to Q is to smile and gently kiss his hair. Q punches him in his bruised ribs. Tosser thinks he’s so funny.

*****

When James and Q have been debriefed and released, they go home together with every intention of going to bed and sleeping for days. When they get there, Ben’s car is in the drive and the drawing room upstairs is the only lit window. They go straight up the stairs to greet him, stopping short in the doorway and drawing themselves up sharply. James sighs. Of course.

Ben looks a mess. His hair is messed and there’s dark circles under his eyes. Who knows when he last slept? He’s wearing one of James’s dressing gowns. The slippers are his own, Tribble slippers James had bought on a lark the last time he was in America. He looks like a homeless person. James carefully moves forward, holding out a hand as if to gain the trust of a frightened animal.

“Every time... every time the phone rang... I thought... and then I realized that if something did happen, I’d never know. No one would ever tell me. And I’d never know what became of you. I’d never know what became of the men that I love.”

It’s no use talking to him when he’s like this. They manage to get him to the master bedroom, strip him down and take a shared shower with him. He’s dressed in clean pajamas, falls asleep the moment that he’s tumbled into the bed. They brush their teeth, dress for bed and position themselves on either side of Ben’s now peaceful form.

“We’ve got to change something. This won’t work. He’ll need to know some things or he’ll go mad.”

James doesn’t answer Q’s words, simply squeezes his hand and folds himself over Ben’s back. Yes, in the morning they’ll change things. He never wants to see Ben like this again.


End file.
